My children woke up
excited to get ready for school. They put on their green shirts, old
jeans, and tennis shoes. They packed their gloves, milk jugs (for
watering the plants), hand shovels and weeding tools.

Let's face it, today was like no other day of the year. It was Earth Day!

The first Earth Day (April 22, 1970) had some 20
million demonstrators involved. Today, Earthday.org, which seems to
serve as the central hub of Earth Day events, lists "31,464,418 acts of green and counting."

Well, isn't that nice.

After a day with their family at the beach, Nancy Sleeth asked her husband, Matthew Sleeth a question that would change his life forever.
"What is the biggest problem facing the world?" After thinking of all
the problems of war, disease, terrorism and poverty, he finally replied
that, "The world is dying."

After much
reflection and many life changing decisions, Dr. Sleeth, an emergency room physician released the
Green Bible early in 2008. The
Green Bible is bound in environmentally friendly,
cotton/linen cover, recycled paper, soy-based ink, and a water-based
coating.

There are many essays in the opening of the Bible by
leading conservationists and theologians. Those passages which support stewardship of the earth are highlighted with green text. In the sidebars, Wendell Berry and
others are quoted to offer further encouragement for the stewardship of
the Earth.

While the publication may have good
intentions, there are some biblical scholars who (perhaps justifiably)
criticize the Green Bible. Here is an excerpt from Laurence Vance's
article, "Is
God Green?"

"Some of the
biblical passages highlighted in green mention pollution. For example:

If a man divorces his wife and she goes
from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? Would
not such a land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many
lovers; and would you return to me? says the Lord (Jeremiah 3:1).

"The land here is polluted because of moral
activity, not because someone put toxic waste in a dump. Examples could
be multiplied to show that many of the 'green' verses in The Green
Bible are not green at all.

"What we are never told by any of the contributors to The
Green Bible is that the two biggest environmental catastrophes in
the history of the world catastrophes that dwarf anything man has ever
done are both deliberate acts of God: Noah's flood in the past
(Genesis 7:4-10) and the burning up of the earth in the future (2 Peter
3:10).

"It is fitting that the New
Revised Standard Version is the version of choice for The Green
Bible. It is one of the few Bible versions that says the earth and
everything in it will be "disclosed' instead of "burned up' (2 Peter
3:10)."

Many of the Green Bible's book reviews exalt the
opening essays which comprise nearly half of the 1440 pages as the most powerful
part of the book. , What is troubling is the remainder is of course, the BIBLE!

Dr. Matthew Sleeth's essay, entitled
The Power of a Green God, describes the transformation of him and
his family :